Open source is often treated as an exception: software someone chose to give away when they could have kept it closed, valued for what it saves rather than for what it is. That gets the history backward. At Nimiq, we are open source by default, and this is our case for why building this way is right, why we commit to it, and why it matters more now than it has in years, as AI changes how software is written and governments start treating open code as strategic. The story is worth telling in order, from the beginning.

History of Open Source

Openness was the default. It was fenced off for commercial reasons, then deliberately rebuilt. In the first decades of computing, sharing source code was standard practice, and programmers at universities and corporate labs built on each other's work by default. The formal movement arrived only once that practice was disappearing. In 1983, Richard Stallman launched the GNU Projectat MIT to build a complete operating system that anyone could use freely, and in 1985, he founded the Free Software Foundation to support it. The principle was defined by four freedoms: to run, study, modify, and redistribute software. Studying and modifying requires access to the source code, which is what keeps the code open. Stallman's 1989 GNU General Public License enforced this through copyleft, which uses copyright itself to require that modified versions retain the same freedoms rather than being closed off again.

Open Source enters the chat

Software became proprietary as it turned into a commercial product through the late 1970s and 1980s, when vendors restricted source code and tightened licensing. The free software movement reopened it deliberately, and a second shift in 1998 accelerated adoption: a group including Christine Peterson coined the term "open source" to describe the same practice in business-friendly language, and the Open Source Initiative was formed to define it and certify licenses. The reframing worked, and open source moved from principle to industry standard within a decade.

The projects that carried it are now infrastructure. Linux, started by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and released under the GPL in 1992, combined with the GNU tools to complete the free operating system Stallman had set out to build. It is now the operating system behind most web servers, runs every one of the top 500 supercomputers, powers Android, and underpins the cloud platforms the rest of the world depends on. Apache and many projects that followed it took the same route. These are not fringe tools but the base layer on which commercial software runs.

None of it sustains itself. Projects that become critical infrastructure depend on organizations built to maintain them, and the structure of those organizations decides whether the openness holds.

Notable companies and foundations

Open source is usually described by what it produces: lower cost, faster development, fewer bugs. For many companies and foundations, that is not why they commit to it. The code is open because openness is the point. The clearest evidence is the organizations built around it, and what they share is structure: a non-profit form that keeps the value from being subject to commercial pressure.

• The Blender Foundation, an independent public benefit organization founded in 2002, exists to provide a complete, free and open source 3D creation pipeline, developed and managed through public projects. Its software is released under the GNU GPL, and since 2020 it has published annual activity and financial reports to keep its work transparent.
• The Open Home Foundation is built on three stated principles for the smart home: privacy, choice, and sustainability. It owns and governs more than 250 open source projects, standards, and libraries, including Home Assistant, ESPHome, and Music Assistant, and exists to keep that software open and free of vendor lock-in.
• The Signal Foundation, a 501(c)(3) (the US tax-exempt status for charitable organizations) non-profit formed in 2018, exists to protect free expression and enable secure global communication through open source privacy technology. It runs with no advertisers and no investors, sustained by donations, and publishes its technology openly so others can adopt the same standards.

A recurrent pattern becomes clear: where a non-profit holds open source as a value, the structure exists to keep the code open, not to keep open the option of closing it.

When companies close what was open

In 2023, HashiCorp moved Terraform, a widely used infrastructure tool, from an open source license to the more restrictive Business Source License. In March 2024, Redis Inc. did the same to Redis, switching from the permissive BSD license to source-available terms that are not open source. Both companies gave the same reason: cloud providers were profiting from the software without contributing back.

In both cases, the community forked the last open version under neutral foundation governance. Terraform gave rise to OpenTofu, now under the Linux Foundation. Redis produced Valkey, also under the Linux Foundation, backed within days by AWS, Google Cloud, and Oracle.

The endings differ, and the difference is the point. Redis reversed course in 2025, adding an open source license again, while Terraform did not.

Open source as Nimiq's DNA

From the beginning, Nimiq has been built on built on transparency, decentralization, and open source. Our protocol and reference implementations are public goods, and we build for community continuity and independence. We have kept the blockchain open since launch, developed in public with the source available to anyone. It follows from why Nimiq exists: to empower individuals with open and independent money.

This is also how we work, not only what we publish. We build in the open because we are interested in technology and in solving hard problems, and we deliberately do that research where people can see it, use it, and build on it. Our ongoing work on post-quantum security is a current example: as we move the blockchain towards cryptography that can withstand quantum computers, we have written openly about what we are changing and why, including the parts that are difficult. The same holds across the project. We are web-native, we prioritize social impact over profit, and we treat what we learn as something to share rather than keep.

All of this matters more, not less, as AI reshapes how software is built and trusted. That is what we want to look at next.

Why this matters more than ever in the AI era

Open source projects depend on human communication. In this AI era, that is easy to forget. It is now trivial to generate code, comments, and answers at volume, and pass machine output into a project as if a person had written and vetted it. But open source has never been only about code being visible. It is about people. About people working together, reading each other's work, explaining decisions, and taking responsibility for them, and none of that survives if the human part is handed to a tool.

Left to run on its own, AI produces plausible output at a scale no one can check, which is the opposite of openness and auditability. When directed by people who stay accountable for the result, it can extend how much they examine and how much they catch. The technology is the same in both cases. What changes the outcome is whether a human stays in the loop.

There is an old objection against open source: "anyone can read the code" is theoretical because, in practice, few people read all of it. AI does not close that gap on its own, but when used well, it helps. Daniel Stenberg, who maintains curl, reports that for complicated changes, after his human reviewers are done, AI review tools still surface one or two issues worth fixing before merge, though they are sometimes wrong. A tool can only check what it is allowed to see, and open code is what makes that checking possible.

Human and automated reviews catch different problems, and together they are stronger than either alone. But the decision to accept a fix and the responsibility for what ships stay with a person. Accountability does not transfer to a tool.

From idealistic movement to the go-to option

The clearest sign that open source is no longer a grassroots preference is that governments now treat it as strategic infrastructure. On 3 June 2026, the European Commission presented a standalone EU Open Source Strategy as part of its Technological Sovereignty Package, the first time open source has been positioned at the highest political level as an instrument for technological independence rather than a technical detail. The reason the EU gives is digital sovereignty: reducing the dependence of European businesses and public administrations on non-European and proprietary providers, and cutting vendor lock-in through open standards. It is the same argument as vendor lock-in, now applied at the scale of a continent: open code means not being bound to a single provider's permission.

The strategy is backed by mechanisms. It revises public procurement to evaluate open-source components fairly, funds open alternatives across key technologies, including operating systems, cloud, AI, and cybersecurity, and takes a lifecycle view, spanning from research to long-term maintenance. That last part is the notable one: the strategy creates a dedicated instrument to address the chronic underfunding of maintenance of critical open-source components. It acknowledges that open source's real challenge is not whether the model works, but how the work that sustains it gets funded, a question we return to below.

None of this replaces what open source already is, but it confirms it. The more that is built in the open, the less every group rebuilds the same foundations from scratch, and the EU now treats those shared foundations as public infrastructure worth funding and protecting.

Why open source is the better default

Open source works because of how it is built: code anyone can inspect is code anyone can find faults in, improve, and rely on. The shift from closed by default to open by default is one of the quieter revolutions in technology, and it happened because open development kept winning where it counts: security through scrutiny, speed through collaboration, trust through transparency.

What open source does not settle on its own is who maintains it over time, and that depends on the project's structure. A company answers to its owners, and its incentives can change. A non-profit foundation has no owners to answer to, so the code stays a public good and maintaining it is the point rather than a cost to cut. This is the problem the EU is now addressing at scale: keeping critical open source software funded and maintained for the long term.

An open-source project lets anyone check the work for themselves, which provides a stronger basis for trust than any assurance we could give. With our code open, that credibility rests on what we build rather than on us. We are a non-profit, our protocol and reference implementations are public goods, and open source is the default we started with and will keep building on. That structure is what makes it sustainable: open by default, built for community continuity and independence.

What's next

We plan to keep improving Nimiq, and we will build it the same way we always have: in the open, working toward open source as the better default for payments.

Being part of the Nimiq community means you get to shape the future of the project. Join the discussion! We've just shared some insight about how to participate in discussing Nimiq's future roadmap in the Nimiq Forum.

Thank you for being part of the community. Keep an eye out for more news soon.

Pura Vida

Team Nimiq